Hall of comedy — Tark’s career blip

Maybe in Albany, N.Y., before his first NBA preseason game. Jerry Tarkanian is riding in an elevator when the doors open and a New York Knick, Anthony Mason, steps in. Mason is friendly and wishes Tark well.

Tark gets off and says to a reporter, “Who was that?”

Or maybe later that same night. Then, Tark turns to the same reporter during the game with a question.

“How do you call a 20-second timeout?”

The stories could continue, but the one that came out Monday heightens the others.

Then, Tark — once San Antonio’s Tark — was elected to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

He deserves his spot in Springfield, and the most significant line on his résumé came in 1990. Then, Tarkanian won the kind of game that was played Monday night.

“It’s one of those games you dream about,” Tarkanian said then about his NCAA championship, and the score confirmed the dream. Nevada-Las Vegas routed Duke by 30 points.

He made four Final Four appearances in all, and even the man who fired him as Spurs coach admired him. “No question in my mind,” Red McCombs said Monday after hearing the news. “He should have been in the Hall of Fame long ago.”

McCombs believed as much in the spring of 1992 after Larry Brown left. Tarkanian kept calling McCombs, sometimes twice a day, telling him he wanted the job, and he’d do anything, summer camps included.

So Tark got the job before the season was over, and he traveled with the team to Phoenix for a playoff series. And when he first revealed how little he knew then — failing to recognize another veteran on another team — one of Tarkanian’s friends from Vegas nudged a reporter with his elbow.

“He acts like he doesn’t know anything,” said the friend. “It’s just that. An act. He’s always listening.”

But it wasn’t an act. If Brown pushed too many buttons, Tarkanian didn’t know where the buttons were.

Tark’s philosophy: He would win games if he had the best players. He thought in simplistic terms, because that’s the way it was for him in college. For more than 20 years, he had recruited quick, tall men, and on most nights, he did have the best players.

The Spurs were different. They had David Robinson, but they were also an ill-fitting puzzle that confused Tark. How could he ever play Avery Johnson, for example, if other teams hadn’t wanted him?

Tark also didn’t know the pro schemes. In training camp, he installed what he called the “Kansas” defense, a UNLV system never tried in the pros. By the season opener, it was clear Kansas was a disaster, and the Spurs scrapped it. A month had been lost.

More critical, he lost the dynamic he had in college. There, he had created us-against-them and installed himself as the kindly godfather. He fought for his kids versus the NCAA, when he didn’t have boosters taking care of them. In that locker room, Tark had an attentive audience.

Here he was dealing with men. And when they saw how he conducted practice — when they saw how little he knew — they rolled their eyes.

“Practices,” said one then, “are a joke.”

They liked him, though. Tark had a sweetness to him. And had he come to the NBA 10 years earlier, when the Lakers approached him, maybe he would have found his footing.

But at this stage of his career, he wasn’t about to rethink everything. His winning record in college said it. Why should he have to go back to school when he had beaten most every school?

So Tark lasted 20 games. And now, in the context of a long, Hall of Fame career, his time in San Antonio is as out of place as he was here, nothing more than comedic relief.